Following announcement of Microsoft Corp.'s Surface tablets on Monday, LG Electronics said it would cease creation of its own media slates for a while and would concentrate on smartphones instead. The move will barely have a significant impact on the market, but the decision is still a very surprising one.

“We have decided to put all new tablet development on the back burner for the time being in order to focus on smartphones. LG does not see Surface competing with anything we are focusing on at the moment,” said Ken Hong, a spokesman LG, in a conversation with Bloomberg news-agency.

It is not a secret that apart from Apple, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and to some extent Samsung Electronics, consumer electronics manufacturers have failed to create competitive slates that could compete with the iPad. Like others, LG did release a couple of media tablets last year, but there were not popular.

In the light of the fact that this year the competition on the market of tablets will continue to heat up, thanks to Windows 8 RT operating system, there will be numerous models from different manufacturer that will rival each other primarily with low price and will not be ideal from either hardware or software standpoints simply because few players in the industry know how to make a proper tablet. Given that the market of media tablets will split up into two major segments - business tablets and consumer tablets - it may make sense for LG to wait some time before the market stabilizes.

From many prospects, it makes some sense for LG to concentrate on smartphones as that market is also growing rapidly, yet there is a clear understanding what should be a competitive smartphone like.

Tags: LG, LG Electronics, Microsoft, Surface, Apple, iPad, Samsung, Galaxy Tab